The Sauk Centre herald. (Sauk Centre, Stearns County, Minn.) 1886-current, 1887-04-14
ATTACKING THE FORESTS.
The Hills and Wales Of Northeast Penn.
sylvania Denuded of their Timber

A half century's incessant onslaught by
sawmills and tanneries on the once dense
forests of pine and hemlock in the coun-
ties of northwestern Pennsylvania and the
adjoining counties of New York state has
at last virtually exhausted them. Out of
$50 immense tanneries in operation fifteen
years ago there is not bark enough left to
keep more than half dozen in operation
to-day, and not more than one of these can
be run over three years longer.
Besides the pine and hemlock forests
that once stood in this region, there were
hundreds of thousands of acres of hard
wOOd-maple, beech, oak and chestnut.
OF these the oak and chestnut have sue
cumbed to the demand for railroad ties
and telegraph poles, to say nothing of the
thousands of acres of finest specimens of
their kind that were sacrificed for cord
wood before the railroads and the peonle
adopted as theIuaiversal fuel. Until
recently it seemed that the splendid groves
of maple and the other hard woods were to
be spared the systematic and unsparinC
onslaught that had swept the hemlock,
pine, oak and chestnut away, but there is
no longer hope of that. 1t is true that
every year more or less maple, birch,
beech and Eastwood were cut and shipped
to markets where there was o demand for
them for various purposes, but now the
war against them has been carried into
the forest.
In all parts of the region extensive es-
adjustments for the manufacture of UNI
brella sticks, clothes pins and similar
articles for which the timber is especially
adapted, have been erected at points most
convenient to the woods desired. There
are probably now in operation fifty of
these establishments, all with improved
machinery for more rapidly reducing the
timber to the forms desired, One Of these
factories, where umbrella sticks are tho
speciality, but where everything is made
into which the material not available for
the speciality can be turned, is sample of
the whole. 1t is in Pike county, few
miles from this village. It requires the
constant work of twenty-five men and
fourteen teams to cut and haul maple logs
to keep it running. This is not the most
extensive factory in the region, either
Only the best maple wood is used. One
lumber operator has just closed q contract
with factory to get out 1,OO0, 900 feet of
choice maple plank for use as fast as he
can furnish it.
This attack on the remaining forests of
the region will denude its hills in few
years. The removal of the pine and hem
lock has seriously affected the water
courses of the counties named, as the dis
appearance entirely of streams of consider
able size, and the extraordinarily dimin-
ishing of larger ones amply testify. The
Delaware river was lower last fall than
ever in its history, while the sudden and
damaging floods that follow storms, which
in former years would scarcely make o
rafting freshet, indicate what the dc.
struction of the forests has induced.
When the hard wood groves are gone the
result to the water supply, according to
competent opinion, will be a serious prob
lem that will confront the inhabitants of
the region.--Cor. New York Sun.